


Human Folly

by kaijucade



Category: Green Room (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied Relationships, Other, Resurrection, brief descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8568979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijucade/pseuds/kaijucade
Summary: Amber reconnects with Pat and she has an offer for him that's impossible to resist.





	1. Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

**Author's Note:**

> There's a part of me that loves this movie for what it is, but here's the larger part that said fuck it. I'm tired of what death can do.

He stayed in the hospital for six weeks, one visitor. Mom couldn’t come, 3000 miles away and no way to get to him. That was okay, he had left her months ago, chosen a new family—and now that family—best not to dwell on it.

He would never play again. He stared and stared at the spiral slash scars, the bunched up fucked up ruin of his wrist, the way his pinkie and ring fingers never quite obeyed him. The doctor said it would always be like that, stuck, unyielding. If only it had been his middle finger frozen. But then who would he be flipping off. Everyone was dead.

Not everyone. Amber visited once. She told him she had an aunt in Nevada. She was going to try things there. She told him “thank you” and “turns out you were the hardest of them” and “good luck.” She also told him “I’m not sorry it was us. That it was me.” But he could tell in her eyes, maybe, that she would have traded places with Emily.

The story was in the news. _The Ain’t Rights_ , a visiting punk band, slashed and hacked and mauled and stumbled into death. Not so surprising that a white supremacist movement was alive and well this far up the coast, but the size of their drug operation, well, that was some shit, unnoticed for how long? How two survivors—Amber became a punk with him, another way to protect herself, a new, short-lived disguise—were well within their rights to defend themselves. How Mr. Darcy of 1224 Caldwell Lane, parishioner of the same church since his arrival here 15 years previous, unassuming but likable businessman—turns out his local chain of three groceries were a front, too—was nothing but a lying, murderous bastard. Pat looked at his picture in the paper, let his wrecked hand rest on the old man’s benign face. It made sense, Pat could see it, the glint behind Darcy’s eyes, but none of it made sense.

He was being discharged soon. The state, or some kindly anonymous benefactor or some bullshit he didn’t pay attention to, was paying for his bills and his rehab. But he wasn’t sticking around. Between the whisper of the leaves, under the patter of the almost ever-present rain, their screams echoed. Pat needed a change of scene.

They wheeled him outside. The one nurse was so polite and friendly, alive and seemingly untouched by her occupation. He guessed touching mangled humans was easier than living as one. She wanted to know who was coming to pick him up, or, quieter, could she pay for his cab to a shelter? He looked at her, ran his good hand over the quarter inch of wavy hair that had grown back in, smiled weakly back. He would be fine, he said, he knew where he was going.

He stood up out of the wheelchair smoothly, almost confident. And she smiled and retreated and he could almost imagine her still watching him through the sliding doors. He looked around. He had no plans. Might as well start walking.

He chose left, down the hill, the vibrant splash of greenery flowing downwards like a waterfall, scooping him along. He trailed his good hand through the wet leaves, flicked the water ahead of him, like a game almost.

A car, a junked-up station wagon, back windows covered in heavy metal band stickers, pulled over to the wrong side of the road to slide slowly beside him. Pat kept his head resolutely forward but watched wearily from his peripheral.

The window rolled down. A familiar face with different hair looked lazily out at him. “You don’t really want to go alone, do you?” Her hair was as short as his, died mouse brown, or maybe returned to her natural color, and it wisped around her cheeks and neck, fine as feathers.

“Hey, Amber,” he replied, slowing, turning. He had a pack of borrowed clothes on his back, and the twenty bucks the nurse had forced on him at the last second, and a wealth of guilt and shame and regret and anger dogging his step.

 _I can’t die here with you._ Pat had said that, exhausted, feebly defiant.

_So don’t._

Amber raised her eyebrows, the engine idling. She wasn’t going to wait forever on this hill, although she must have stuck around for some time for this, or she had come back. For him? For her misguided conscience?

_I can’t die here with you._

Maybe he could live with her. Just a bit. See how far down the road they could go. Together.

Five miles of silence down the highway and Amber turned to him and said, “So, I think I know how to resurrect your band.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"I am leaving, I am leaving." But the fighter still remains :: Simon & Garfunkel

 


	2. Violence Is Only A Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amber shows Pat something beautiful and he's ready to do anything for that reality

He hadn’t laughed so hard since, since, well, shit, he had always been a serious fellow. He hadn’t really let himself go, let loose, felt freely, unthinkingly, except on stage. Music was. Texture, effect, time, aggression, alive. Music was everything. It was his laughter and his screams and his anger and his happiness. It lived on through the night and for one moment and was energy that couldn’t last, but was a tremor in his fingertips that sustained him till the next gig.

But now there would never be a next gig. So he laughed until he teared up at Amber’s statement.

“Pat… Pat. Pat, SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

He finally quieted, curled in the passenger seat, his head coming to rest against the chill of the window. Finally, he filled the silence with an answer. “You know, you can just drop me off at the next rest area.”

He could almost taste her fuming anger. “What bullshit.”

She was silent for a while, not clarifying, not pontificating, not anything but fuming. She was a live wire, tautly wound, a wound of a human that wanted to throw him out of the car, he was sure. He shouldn’t have laughed, but, well, what she had said was bullshit.

Suddenly the car jerked, flying right across three lanes of traffic. Car horns, tires screeching, Pat’s sharp intake of breath and trapped gasp hurting his stomach. “Jesus!”

"No, still me at the wheel…” Amber’s eyes were hard and rigidly focused on the road ahead. “Want to show you something.”

It took several more tense minutes to make their way off the highway, through a shopping district, down a back alley, juddering pothole-marked street. Then through open metal bars reminiscent of those that came down over train tracks, and they were gliding past double-wide trailers, many of them actually rather quaint, flowers in the windowsills, murals clearly painted by children spotting the corrugated walls.

Amber pulled up next to a trailer that had been recently painted with purple, lime green, and yellow detailing. Pat held his tongue, out of confusion, out of a calm, lazy current of fear. Amber wouldn’t hurt him, he didn’t think, but for the few hours he had known her, he had gathered how unpredictable a creature she was.

"Look,” she finally said, tapping the dash between the steering column, and Pat’s eyes flickered out to the opening trailer door. Pat’s eyes flashed back to Amber, a silent “what the fuck” on his lips, but she shushed him.

A couple had stumbled out of the trailer, in an embrace, wrapped in laughter and kisses. Then the young women was skipping down the stairs, pulling her man along, who was grinning a grin Pat hadn’t had the chance to see on the man when he was alive. But, fuck, he was _alive_. No shotgun wounds to the face. And the young girl, her hair pulled up into a messy bun, no knife handle to be seen.

It was Emily, friend to Neo Nazis for a time, and Daniel, former Neo Nazi, both betrayers, both very much alive. In the throes of young love, vital, bubbling, alive.

“Amber,” Pat whispered.

“I know, right?” Amber turned to him with a grin. “Fucking unbelievable.”

Pat watched Emily and Daniel get into a truck, watched Emily lean into Daniel’s side as they drove off.

“I tried to convince them to leave, start somewhere new, where it would most likely be easier, but with Darcy dead and the Family pretty much disbanded or jailed or what-the-fuck-ever… I don’t know, they said they loved it here. Didn’t want to rip up their roots, even though they’re trying to cause different connections to bloom now.” Amber snorted harshly, a laugh Pat supposed. “Sorry, poetics, lyrics, definitely not my strong suit.” She laid a hand on Pat’s arm, then jerked it back when she felt his rough skin. She gritted her teeth and murmured another “sorry.”

“S’alright,” Pat managed to breath. Then, “You owe me a fucking explanation.”

Amber chuckled. “Right, well, I found two meth-head assholes, used some black magic, bada-bing, bada-boom, I made a trade and fixed shit.”

Pat raised both his eyebrows at her. She drew her lips in and nodded with an expression of nonchalance.

“And… that was it? Didn’t cost you anything?”

“Oh,” she swayed her head back and forth, looking out the window, shrugged her shoulders. “Probably the fine print said my soul was fucked, but seeing as I don’t believe or care about whatever comes next, _mea culpa, carpe diem,_ fuckity fuckshit.” She turned to Pat once more and he froze in the intensity of her stare.

“Look, Pat, your friends might not be dead, if it weren’t for, oh, a lot of mine and Emily’s fuck-up-ery. So here we are, here I am, with an apology, and a solution. What’s three scumbags for the chance to see your bandmates again?”

Pat clenched his fists, stared down at his right arm, whole, strong, his left, mangled, useless, barely clenched.

There were tears prickling his eyes.

"Yeah… yeah, fuck it.” _I miss them,_ he couldn’t choke out. He missed Reece’s passion, and Tiger’s idealism, and Sam’s humor. He missed stroking Sam’s hair, and slipping his hand under Tiger’s shirt to scratch the itch he couldn’t reach, and gripping the back of Reece’s neck onstage. He missed the different ways in which their sweat ended up mingling, the many long hours on the road, on stage, so close, so different, yet the same. One band, four bodies. One soul.

“What do we need to do?”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"I know where beauty lives // I've seen it once, I know the warm she gives" :: Madonna


	3. It's Just a Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amber and Pat raise a little Tiger.

They went back into the Oregon woods, parking the station wagon a ways away, crunching down the leaf strewn gravel road, stooping beneath dripping branches, and listening to the bird song and shivery wind and taptaptap of their hearts, of the rain off the branches.

They went back to the Neo Nazi bar. There was broken police tape on some of the building corners, waving sarcastically in the breeze. There were bullet holes and dark patches Pat was certain was old blood and broken glass no had bothered to sweep up. They stood in the middle of the quiet pit before the stage, alone, together, taking stock.

“It has to be here.” Amber had said. “I think one a night, to conserve my strength. I did Emily and Daniel together, and let me tell you, raising them, being passed out, dead to their concerns, for half a night—so they were greeted by tanked me and dead meth heads, in a place they remembered dying in…well, luckily, they didn’t panic too much, waited for me to come to, Emily only slapped me kinda roughly on the ear for the trouble.” Amber clucked her tongue. “Then she kissed me, a thank you, and we buried the assholes somewhere out there.” She gestured vaguely to outside. Then, Amber pulled a thick leather tome from her bag, tossed it with a violent smack on the floor. “We’ll need that later.” She checked her phone, grinned. “In about an hour, we’ll have some poor schmuck to sacrifice.”

Pat followed Amber across the room as she hopped up on to the bar, swung her legs back and forth. She glanced around, “Ho shit,” she cackled gleefully and pulled an intact bottle of Jack from under somewhere along the counter. “Score!”

She took two healthy swigs from the bottle and handed it to Pat. He meekly let the liquor grace his tongue, flicked his tongue out a few times, coughed, and had to laugh back at Amber’s expression. “I always just stuck to wine or-or weed,” Pat offered.

Amber clucked her tongue. “I can see it,” she chuckled. Held the bottle of Jack pretty delicately between two of her fingers and thumb, pinkie out. Put on a rough, posh British accent. “The boo-kay in this vintage, mmmm yeessss!”

Pat ended up laughing with her. Rubbed the back of his neck with his good hand.

“What do we do when ‘schmuck’ gets here?”

Amber knocked back another swig. “Well, we knock him out, or knife him, we don’t kill him, of course, just enough to incapacitate; then we draw these fooey symbols, say a few things in mumbo-jumbo, stabby stab, and voila! Uh, who do you want to bring back first?”

Pat looked away. It was a rough decision. What if… what if this was all fucking crazy? What if Amber was insane, playing him, so lost from what she had witnessed that she was just, mad with grief? Pulling him down with her? But that didn’t explain what he had seen at the trailer park… maybe he really was face blind, not just painfully shy offstage, but actually incapable of remembering faces, and the couple coming out of the trailer, tangled up in each other, moving quickly, they just looked close enough to be mistaken for that unlucky dead couple. What if Pat was able to bring only one band member back? None of this made any sense and everything could go so fucking wrong or just be one big lie…

“Tiger,” he finally answered, and was grateful to Amber for having waited patiently.

“Cool! I liked his dumb green hair.” She hopped down from the bar, careful grip on the bottle of Jack, and skipped across the space.

As Amber rummaged around in her bag, crying “aha!” as she pulled out a plastic baggy of thick colored chalk, Pat wandered onstage. He kicked a fallen mic stand upright, wobbled it back and forth between practiced feet, let it fall with a satisfying clatter. He glanced briefly at a brown splattered mic fallen a foot away from a busted in amp. He stared at the spot on the floor where Tiger had fallen.

Pat furiously blinked back tears. He wanted to call his mom, but he didn’t have a cell phone.

“Hey, hey!” Amber had been trying to get his attention. “I think a car just pulled up outside.” A switchblade glinted where she held it down by her waist. “Want to be the bait?”

A few minutes later, Pat had drawn their victim inside, a scrawny looking tweaker who wouldn’t stop scratching, alternating between his chin and his forearm. Pat had promptly forgotten the victim’s name. When they came out on to the bar floor, the killing floor, he heard the tweaker mutter a curse behind him. “What’s with the drawing, man, what’s with the drawing?”

Pat managed to sidestep out of the way when Amber barreled into the victim, clonking him on the head with the sealed bottle of Jack.

“Oh, thank God, that didn’t break,” Amber said, as their victim crumpled perfectly in the center of the—rune? Sigil? Big, fucking, spooky spell map? “Should’ve thought to find something else, but well, I was busy doodling.”

She tapped her foot against the victim’s prone leg and smiled. “’Kay, so,” she flipped to a page in the spell book. Pat glanced over her shoulder, but could make out nothing from the language inscribed. It wasn’t Latin, he was pretty sure. Nordic? What did it matter? This was either some elaborate delusion or—best not to question it.

Although… “Hey, did you ever read a short story called _The Monkey’s Paw_?” Pat spoke up.

But Amber was already intoning, ignoring him, dead to the world around her. Her eyes had rolled back, and her tongue was twitching out from her mouth like a dead slug and she was still speaking and a wind had kicked up inside the bar and Pat covered his ears and stared at the sudden bloody holes in the back of the tweaker—when had Amber stabbed him—what was Pat doing there?Howhadhecomebacktothisplace—

All noise stopped. Amber had fallen into a squat. The once blue chalk on the ground had turned blacker than black, like shadowy cracks into an underworld had opened up, quietly. Pat’s head jerked as a gurgled cry echoed from his right. Between the stage and the bar counter, closer to the exits from the room, Tiger’s body convulsed, blood flowing up from the ground into the gash in his neck.

“Ohhhh,” Amber groaned. “I’m glad I was out of it for Emily, then, for Dan…” she trailed off, her tongue flicking ever so slightly out from between her teeth. Sweat poured down her face.

Tiger was flailing his right arm, fending off a phantom dog, tears were sliding back into his eyelids, he was panting, he was calming down, he was still. Pat made his way to him and fell to his side.

Pat reached a shaking hand out to Tiger’s face. Tiger’s eyes were clenched closed. He was mouthing something over and over, then he was mumbling, then hissing, then his eyes flickered open, and stared right into Pat’s eyes.

“I hate dogs, man,” Tiger said. Then his brow furrowed and his hand fluttered at his neck. “What in the actual fuck…” he breathed.

Tears dripped from Pat’s nose onto Tiger’s shirt. “Oh man, oh man,” Pat sobbed, pulling Tiger up from the ground and into a wrenching hug.

“Hey, hey, hey, Pat,” Tiger raised his arms, wonderingly, and then firmly, around Pat’s back, stroking. “Pat-pat,” Tiger said, with a laugh as he patted his bandmate’s back.

Tiger glanced at Amber. “Well, shit,” he whispered.

Pat finally leaned back, and reached his hand up to cup Tiger’s cheek. “Unreal,” he breathed.

“You’re telling me,” Tiger answered. “I didn’t think I’d live to be 70, let alone come back from the abyss and all that.”

Amber was clapping her hands gleefully. “Oh, this is fucking cool, I’m like a witch or some shit. Man, I should trade someone from the Family next.”

Tiger shot a confused look between Amber and Pat. “I’m so, kinda, very much lost. But fuuuuck, this is good lyric material, man.”

Pat limply raised his ruined arm. “I don’t think I can… I can’t really play anymore.”

Tiger was silent, sobering up, the hairs on the backs of his arms and neck calming down. “You’re still our best lyricist… dude, fucking learn bass with your right. Or drums, fuck Def Leppard, but if they can do it…” Tiger leaned his head forward to bump it against Pat’s, and Pat gasped, breathing in the scent of him, same ol’ Tiger, funky watermelon body wash he splurged on at random pharmacies along their travels, faint weed musk and pepperoncini tang, Tiger’s true addiction.

“Tiger,” Pat breathed, eyes closing, their breaths mingling.

“Wow,” Amber whistled. “Gay.”

And Pat found himself chuckling, but he didn’t let go of Tiger’s hand or lean away for a good long while.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"When the sky is gray and the moon is hate // I'll be down to get you. Roots of earth will shake. // Burn away the goodness; You and I remain." :: Creedence Clearwater Revival


	4. When the Opportunity Comes Can't Afford to Rot Everybody C'mon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amber and Pat and Tiger acclimate to each other.

Later that night, Amber had set up a tent for them; Tiger had excitedly crafted an indoor firepit (a hole in the roof allowing for smoke ventilation); and Pat had cooked up some American cheese and ham sandwiches, mayo for Amber, spicy mustard for Tiger, and hummus for Pat as their respective spreads.

They swapped random stories: worst teachers in high school (Tiger won for an English teacher who had made advances on him, then almost gotten him kicked out of school for “vicious libel”); favorite authors (Amber loved Meyer, loved to hate her, loved to love her poor abused characters, ranted for an awkward quarter of an hour but Pat and Tiger let her be, Pat out of his general complacent nature, Tiger from sheer post-resurrection exhaustion); and, of course, the conversation circled back to their “desert island bands.”

“Sticking with Madonna and Slayer. Like a sexy, disgusting, gnarly orgy. I could die that way.”

The boys winced at Amber’s words, and let them be.

“Yeah, still The Misfits for me… I don’t remember much from the black, but I clung to their songs, man… I think.”

Amber and Pat let Tiger’s worried stare fall between them for what felt like an appropriate amount of time.

“My band is—”

“Still don’t give a shit,” Amber said, cheeky grin sparkling in the flickering glow of the fire.

“Fuck you,” Tiger echoed, right behind Pat’s breathy exhalation of “fuckyou”.

Pat grinned. Silence. “Creedence.”

“Creed?!”

Tiger spat, “Creedence Clearwater Revival.”

Amber nodded her head, pursing her lips. “Respect.”

Eventually they were full, of sandwiches and booze and talk, and they, without speaking, without mulling over it, arranged themselves in the tent, Pat lying on his back, Tiger resting his head on Pat’s chest, Amber on Pat’s other side, her back turned to the boys, but still close.

Sometime during the night, she turned over, and cuddled against Pat’s ribs.

In the morning, neither said anything about how Tiger and Amber had ended up holding hands across Pat’s chest. Pat was the last to wake up and missed their looks and by the time he was fully awake, Tiger and Amber were back to their jovial spatting, the night smothered by intentional forgetting.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"This highway never fucking ends // American nightmare running scared" :: The Misfits


	5. It Ain't Like My Life Is Ended, But More Like It Never Started

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tiger and Pat, letting it be, and Amber, picking up a chick.

“It should be Reece next, right?” Tiger asked. They had discussed the vague particulars Amber had provided. Tiger was fine with trading scumbags for family. More fine than Pat’s still churning stomach seemed to be. Pat kept finding ways to touch Tiger in some way: brushing his hand as they both gathered things to burn outside, resting back to back with Tiger as they all listened to music from Amber’s iPod (actually not surprisingly, her musical tastes had plenty of Britney and Lily Allen sprinkled amongst the tracks from Black Flag, Rancid, and The Boomtown Rats.) At some point, Tiger and Pat just linked pinkies, taking a short walk through the woods, and it had felt juvenile and silly and heart-thuddingly right.

Tiger had been dead, and now he was back, and he kept starting from the different—now new, now heart-achingly familiar, now always tinged with frightened nostalgic dross—sensations the world had to offer. Raindrops from tree branches falling on his head, a powerful sneeze, an owl breezing by with no sound, a car blasting its horn in the distance. Pat’s scant laughter, Amber’s tendency to whistle while she worked. Tiger would find himself rubbing his chest, his own neck, the visceral sensations associated with his death blissfully fading as the second day of his second life waned.

He didn’t feel like a zombie, like he was going to nom on anyone at a moment’s notice. He felt quite normal. But he also felt the electricity, the hair-raising _whoa_ from being near both Amber and Pat. They had both brought him back… Tiger was hoping that he felt tremors from proximity to Amber just because, and with Pat… well, so much was different. So much didn’t need to be stymied anymore, right? Who was even aware of this ridiculous, blessed, charged, forsaken situation?

Amber was scowling at her phone. “Ok, so Ted, he was a member, he doesn’t ‘feel right’ about coming to see me—pussy—it being so soon after everything went to shit soooo… plan default, I’ll drum up a druggy.”

She sauntered away, tapping at her phone, staccato.

Tiger side-eyed her, glanced at Pat. “Do you trust her?”

Pat tilted his head. “She helped me fight our way out that night… she brought back her friend and that friend’s guy… I don’t know if she really cares about us, but… she’s making amends.”

"Damn, dude, lotta ellipses ya got there.”

Pat punched Tiger softly in the shoulder. His gaze lingered on his bandmate’s smooth throat.

“Sorry… you know I’ve always been prone to… pauses.”

Tiger chuckled. “Yeah… glad nothing’s changed.”

Eventually, a new victim showed up. And it was a girl. And Pat and Tiger shot looks at Amber.

“Don’t give me that. This girl was the one who put a needle in her little sister’s arm, stayed stone cold sober, and let her little sister OD while she screwed her boyfriend.”

Pat and Tiger shared a look.

 “God, you guys can be sanctimonious. She also kicks puppies and pees on public art installations, happy?”

Pat and Tiger each cleared their throats, and Amber went to invite the girl inside, and Pat brushed a finger down Tiger’s arm, and Tiger blushed, and brushed a tender finger down Pat’s mangled arm, and Pat blinked back tears.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"The Telex machine is kept so clean // as it types to a waiting world" :: The Boomtown Rats


	6. The Only Love There Is, Is the Love We Make

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reece rises and he has a realization.

_Now we won’t all live, but I don’t know, maybe we won’t all die._

For a few moments, Pat and Tiger and Amber thought the spell had failed. No Reece materialized. Pat was startled to realize he wasn’t exactly sure how his friend had died. Tiger was biting his lip. He had died first; of course, he had no clue. Amber was clutching her aching head. She could feel that the spell had worked.

“Goddamn, you dipshits, he died outside.”

Pat and Tiger stumbled outside first. They both froze at the sight of their friend’s still body. Blood was disappearing from his shirt. Reece was so still. Then, suddenly, he was gasping, flailing onto his back, waving his arms at—

Tiger reached him first. Both Pat and Tiger ran gentle hands over Reece’s convulsing body, both murmured words of encouragement and love.

Reece slowly came back to his senses. He glanced between the two boys above him. “I—this can’t be—how—”

“You’re welcome!” Amber’s voice piped up. She was lounging against the door, the one that Pat suddenly remembered he had stumbled through with Sam and Amber, how Sam had fallen under bullets and teeth—

“That bitch?” Reece grunted, sitting upright.

“Damn right,” Amber called, her voice echoing throughout the rough parking lot. She was cleaning her nails with her bloody switchblade.

Reece looked back and forth between Pat and Tiger, taking them in. Pat, slight and ever puppy dog eager; Tiger, slighter and shocking smile and familiar shock of green hair and, surprisingly, tears in his eyes. Tiger was the least likely of any of them to cry, even at movies where they killed the dog.

Reece shook his head at the thought. His hands found one from Pat and Tiger and he squeezed gently. “Are we all back? Sam,” his hands clasped tighter, desperate.

“Tomorrow night,” Pat assured. “And you really should thank Amber. Both of you being back… couldn’t have done it without her.”

Reece ignored that, continuing to drink in the sight of his boys. “Every time I’ve ever looked at you guys, thought about you, missed you… it was always like getting stabbed in the heart.”

Reece had never been so blatant with his feelings. Pat and Tiger shared a weak smile. Then all three boys huddled together.

"Reunited and it feels so good,” Amber muttered, slipping back, unnoticed, into the darkness of the bar.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"If you don't like the world you're living in // Take a look around you // At least you got friends" :: Prince


	7. Don't Criticize, The Curse It Is Cast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam thanks the punk gods and Amber spirals down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've read this far, you've read past brief descriptions of violence and murder, but I just thought I'd give a heads-up that this chapter briefly describes a dead/sacrificed dog.

Sam came back to them in fits and bloody spurts. Pat, Tiger, Reece, they had been sharing a cigarette outside, right in front of the doors where it had happened. Tiger had jumped backwards at her sudden appearance, his back slamming the wall, a groan escaping his lips, not load enough to cover Sam’s screams. Slowly, her screams faded.

Reece bent to her first. Pat was nervously flicking the last of the ash from the cigarette, his eyes flashing to the door and back, wondering where Amber was, wondering why the fuck did she do it so early in the morning, freaking about who the victim was. They had seen no one all night. It had been a casual night really, passing around booze, and mostly just talking about animation (a consensus that _The Iron Giant_ was legit, dissension about whether or not _Avatar the Last Airbender_ could be considered anime, confusion over why Reece had a soft spot for _A Troll in Central Park_ (“It’s Don Bluth, man, what can I say?”))

Sam was sobbing, shaking, and looked smaller than she ever had, on stage or off. Her eyes were clenched and she had gripped tightly to Reece’s shirt and he was murmuring calming things to her. Finally, she blinked open her eyes, and her hands flew around Reece’s neck, and he gasped and chuckled a little as she pulled him down in to a desperate hug. His arms encircled her, and stilled on her back, and he stayed calm and quiet until she was ready to stand up.

Tiger stepped forward and clasped her hands, drew them to his lips. He reached one hand up to tuck some of her hair behind her ear. “Welcome back,” he whispered.

Reece still had a hand at the small of Sam’s back, supporting her. She swayed, swallowed, looked behind Tiger to Pat, who raised his hand “hello,” then winced as he realized which hand he had raised.

Sam’s expression burst into a gleeful smile, radiant, megawatt. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but you guys, _all of you_ , thank the fucking punk gods.” She pulled Tiger and Reece in to a group hug and raised an eyebrow at Pat and chuckling, Pat trotted over to join in.

The door slammed open and the group broke apart. Amber was silhouetted against the dim light from the bar, but her frown, and the bloody knife in her hand, were in sharp relief.

“Can y’all come in and clean up? I need to rest.” She was gone before any of them could respond.

“Okay, _now_ I don’t know what the fuck is going on.” She glanced between her boys and Pat shrugged and Tiger tucked his thumbs in his jean loops and Reece scratched at her back and said, “It’s kinda a funny story…”

Eventually they had caught Sam up to speed, eventually her eyebrows had stopped shooting up to almost disappear into her wild curling hair, eventually Pat had made the suggestion that they go in and survey the damage. See what needed to be cleaned up.

A large pitbull was still and gutted on the ground, the new inky black lines and whorls that seemed to pit the floor beneath its prone body in sharp contrast to its lighter coat and the still bright red of its blood.

Sam gasped and turned to hide her face in Tiger’s shirt.

No one said anything. Pat began to look around for rags and bleach, hoping for a wheelbarrow. He didn’t feel as comfortable thinking about dragging a dead dog around as he had somehow found himself when dragging the dead bodies the last few nights. It looked… sad and pathetic on the ground.

Tiger mumbled, “I hate dogs.”

Sam took a step back and glanced back at the dog and shuddered. “I… I get that because of certain…” She swallowed. “Dogs are _made_ to be bad, mistreated, trained. Man… there’s something methodical about how men kill. It’s abusive, not survival.”

Pat hung his head, limp rag and spray bottle of bleach in his hands, ready to clean up, frozen by thoughts of what he had done. To survive.

“Oh, boo hoo, little girl, it was you or the dog. Same as last time. Thought you would get that.” Amber had reemerged from the belly of the bar. Her hands were clean, her hair slicked back from a shower.

“We’re the same age, I’ll bet,” Sam’s response stayed that curt.

Reece had come to stand beside her and Tiger. They formed a triangle around the dead dog, Sam, Tiger, and Reece by the bar, Pat hovering right beside it, Amber as the final point. Her sparking look ratcheted between the bandmates.

“You ungrateful bitches!” She was smacking her clenched fists absentmindedly against her thighs.

“Hey,” Reece started.

Pat set down his supplies and raised his hands in supplication. “Amber, maybe you and I could go sit down and talk somewhere—”

“No, no, NO!” She was clutching her head now, a breathy keening beginning to rise from her small frame.

“Okay, resurrection mama, maybe you need a nap?” Reece said, inching toward her.

Pat called sharply to Reece, “Don’t!”

Reece stilled, having placed himself in front of Tiger and Sam.

Amber’s eyes fell to Pat. Her eyes were streaming. “Knock. Me. Out.” She gasped. “D-don’t kill me. You won’t like what happens if I die.” She was clutching at her head now, her nose was dripping blood. A wind was picking up inside the bar.

Pat stooped, grabbed the spray bottle, launched it in one motion. He followed the projectile, and followed Amber’s body as the bottle landed on her head, knocking her back, and he gave a sharp jab to her skull. She stilled, the wind dropped, Reece whistled low.

“I had the heebie jeebies before, Pat, but now…”

The rest of the band came to stand over Pat and Amber.

Pat slowly stood up and Tiger draped an arm over his shoulder.

“So,” Tiger spoke softly, “if our new den mother dies, I take it _we_ die?… Again?”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"I wish I was homeward bound // Home where my thought's escaping // Home where my music's playing // Home where my love lies waiting silently for me." :: Simon & Garfunkel


	8. Look At All the Happy Creatures Dancing on the Lawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing ever really ends.

They buried the dog, they cleaned the floor, they stole a bigger van, they set out.

Amber slept in the way back.

It had been three days. They drove aimlessly. They were getting reacquainted with each other. With the way Tiger’s sleep farts could shake most of the van occupants awake; with the way Sam’s laughter was punctuated with genuine uncontrollable snorts; with Reece’s random outbursts about the state of the country, prompted by an ad for Chick-fil-A or nothing at all; Pat’s need to scratch or scrawl a poignant quote into every bathroom they used, even if it took him ten minutes to think of just the right thing.

It was almost as if the nightmare hadn’t happened. It was almost as if they were living a dream.

If not for the evidence of Pat’s fucked up arm. If not for the sleeping beauty in their backseat.

“What are we supposed to do with her, man?” Reece had asked last night.

Amber wasn’t conscious, she wasn’t much of anything. She didn’t seem dehydrated, she didn’t have any reaction to food wafted under her nose, she wasn’t messing herself. She was just… out of it. Out of time, out of this level of existence, well within their sight, a worrying stone of a girl in their van, out of it.

“We just… wait, I suppose.”

“Where are we headed?” This from Sam.

“I… have a direction in mind.”

They had been ambling down the coast, but now Pat took an exit, and the others smiled to each other. Oh. There.

After a few more hours, Pat pulled the van up to the dunes. Their windows were rolled down, the sun was setting. Right over those sandy hills, ocean whispers, salt spray. So close.

Amber shot upright in the back. Tiger screeched the loudest.

“If the cherry does something you don’t like, shoot,” Amber said without opening her eyes.

 “Oooookay,” Reece and Sam growled together.

 “Amber?” Pat asked. He wanted to reach a hand back, check her forehead, or lightly smack her cheek or something.

She blinked slowly. Stared around at them all.

“God, I need to piss.”

She stumbled from the back of the van, and was over the dunes like a sprite.

“Alrighty, then,” Tiger said, grabbing their basket of food and booze. “After her.”

The Ain’t Rights crested the hill and sighed as one at the sight of the ocean before them. A beach they had visited several times during their meandering months of touring. A beach that felt right, felt whole, felt like them. Was still here, still pounding and sighing and swaying and crashing, despite everything that had happened to them, that they had done.

"Are we gonna be okay, guys?” This from Reece. They watched him swallow the lump in his throat. Tiger, closest to him, kissed his cheek, rubbed his back.

“Yeah, I’d bet on it,” Sam said, squeezing Tiger’s hand. Then she linked her arm through his, and pulled the pair of boys, laughing, down the dunes, toward the sweet salty wet.

Pat followed slower, laughing, taking in the sight. He almost walked past Amber, nestled behind some driftwood, also watching, biting her lip, wringing her hands.

“Amber… are you gonna be okay?” Pat slowly sank down beside her. They sat shoulder to shoulder, watching three young, old, risen, falling, laughing, alive bandmates in the waves.

“Maybe… if it’s okay if I stick around for a bit.”

“Yeah…” Pat chuckled. “Hey… you can bang on a tambourine, right?”

Finally, she smiled. “You little shit.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“The human folly that you’re seeing unfold, the world is kind of neutral to it // You know, it’s kind of, it exists whether we are successful or we fail.” :: Anton Yelchin


End file.
